The famous psychologist Jonathan Haidt once said that to understand the governing narratives of our time, we needed to “follow the sacredness… find out what people believe to be sacred, and when [you find that, and the people gathered], there you find rampant irrationality”. Rampant-Sacred-Irrationality [RSI] is also the acronym for Repetitive Strain Injury. They have some similarities, the most obvious of which is that they are painful and exhausting.
Rampant-Sacred-Irrationality is everywhere, or so it seems. It describes the current state of abortion debates. Both sides are vehemently pro-life. Gun control in the USA is another. Both sides believe gun purchase and ownership should be controlled, but have very different ideas about who should have a gun, when, where and why.
Do our best interests as nation lie in one version of freedom and identity that is nationalist, or the other version that is internationalist. Families – or friendships lasting many decades – have split irrevocably on the pivot of Rampant-Sacred-Irrationality. Like some ancient or modern civil war, we find kith, kin, neighbors and friends creating dividing lines that separate those who adhere to their sacred (the subject or issues that cannot be questioned or debated), and those that might dare to challenge it, who must be repelled at all costs.
Debates on gender, sexuality, transgender, ethnicity and religion also pivot on Rampant-Sacred-Irrationality. If my experience and identity is my right to own, and cannot be questioned, then it becomes sacred. To challenge it, or seek compromise, will be interpreted as a violation. Suddenly, and somehow in contemporary culture, we have reached a point where everyone has a sacred right to be entirely believed.
But how are churches to resolve persistent divisions within a culture soaked through with Rampant-Sacred-Irrationality? There are lessons to be learned from the past. The American Civil War (1861-1865) pitched the southern Confederate states against the northern Union states. The practice of slavery in the United States was one of the key political issues of the 19th century, and it was a primary cause of the Civil War.
For Episcopalians in the USA the division was painful. The economy of the southern states depended to a large extent on slavery. The northern economy did not. Episcopalians split down the middle on this, albeit only for the duration of the war. But the legacy continues to this day. (Incidentally, all denominations split like this during the Civil War, and many in the Church of England supported the separatist Confederates, because they wanted to a divided and weakened USA).
The Confederates ordained their own Bishop to care for the pastoral needs of slave owners, it becomes impossible to question the relationship between personal legitimacy and corporate agreement. At the end of the American Civil War, the Episcopalian Church was reunited, and meekly accepted, fully, that Confederate Bishop as an equal. Even today, many denominations struggle to come to terms with the current issues served up by Rampant-Sacred-Irrationality.
The flip side of Rampant-Sacred-Irrationality is figuring out what it is that individuals, communities, countries and churches are really fearful of. What are the real risks they think they face?
Identifying and measuring risk is a controversial field and it can have a tendency to “anaesthetise moral feeling”. Defining risks clearly enough to measure them will inevitably bring value-related fundamentals into focus. Risk necessarily entails losing something of value, and this of course means that if individuals, families, communities or societies value different outcomes, they will define their risks quite differently. What we presume the risk to be reflects our core values.
Mary Douglas’ classic anthropological study Purity and Danger (1966) argued that societies define themselves by how they manage the perceived dangers they face. Douglas followed her mentor, Edward Evans-Pritchard, and his classic study of the Azande’s views on witchcraft (1937). Evans-Pritchard noted that the Azande invoked witchcraft for a range of risks, including adultery, theft, crop failures, illness and even buildings (i.e., their sturdiness or collapse, etc).
As strange as the Azande beliefs might seem to those in the developed world, Evans-Pritchard’s ground-breaking study refused to treat such beliefs as primitive. He pointed out that all individuals and communities invest in managing perceived threats and warding off dangers. As Ulrich Beck, the sociologist once noted, ‘risk society’ is a human norm, and is organised around the management and minimisation of danger.
Mary Douglas further noted that societies tend to fragment when their constituent groups (i.e., voters, business, government, churches, faith communities, ethnic groups, etc) cannot agree on the common dangers they face. Or, worse, will perceive the dangers and risks others might flag as erroneous, distractions, or possibly even by addressing them only adding to the actual risks being faced. Definitions of risk reflect the norms adopted by a society, and point to their perception of how they think the world is or should be.
Our age is one that is split between haunting fears and foreboding, and irrational expectations of wellbeing and security. But life is full of surprises, and not all of them welcome. As the alternative theologian Woody Allen once remarked, “if you want to make God laugh, tell (her) your future plans”. It is unwise to sacralise your personal values and hopes. It is better to remember that perfect fear casts out love. And that perfect love casts out fear (I John 4: 18).